Centaurs (Parallel Worlds)

by Aaron Pery

  "And concentrate on taking care of all our living children? I agree with both of you." Jenny smiled suddenly. "Especially since I'd like to have my own children when this crisis is over, kids who'll know not only their mother but their true father as well."

  "May I volunteer for the job of helping you achieve that?"

  "I thought you'd never ask, Arvin. Yes, I'd like that very much."

  "And, my dear, just like Angie's George, I'd like to adopt your surname if you don't mind."

  "Mind? I'd love it because we'll all be very clearly one family."

  "Then we have another pair of hitched oldsters here." Susan said, chuckling. "But tell us, Marty, how come no one was seriously hurt by the bomb?"

  "Because Dave had ordered everyone to have lunch, which the cooks had set up on the beach as a celebration of their first day of freedom. They loved it and participated happily until the bomb went off and kind of spoiled their fun."

  "Thank God for Dave's decision to have them have a bit of merriment."

  "More than a bit because they accompanied lunch with quite a bit of booze."

  "Like normal people would on a picnic?" Jenny said. "Gosh, I'm glad we've all finally achieved this stage in our life. What are you going to do now, Marty?"

  "Grab a shower before I return to Heraklion because there's a lot for me to do there still."

  "Me, too." Susan said. "Are you going to return there in a conventional way or will you whoosh over like you did before."

  Marty grinned. "Surprised you a bit when I did that?"

  "Actually, you scared the shit out of everybody except Nick."

  "Myself too, I'll admit. Anyway, Sue, how about joining me in my little car in about thirty minutes rather than drive your jeep, which we should leave here so it and the buses can be used for transportation and maybe to shuttle people into town tomorrow so they can see it."

  "Great. How about you, Nikki, want to join us?"

  "I need to do that because this morning Paula and I looked into the financial aspect of our new life and discovered that our new government is quite rich."

  "How come?"

  "We discovered that the royal treasury contains literally tons of gold coins in two huge vaults under the bank building, which I'd like to take a look at. We also found that there's a lot more of it in just about every city that used to be inhabited by the Gogians before their civil war, that we could retrieve if we want to."

  "What are we going to do with so much gold?"

  "Silly question, Marty, because now that we've become a democratic nation no one's going to work for free, nor eat for free either."

  "I'm aware of that. So what are we going to do in order to bring it about?"

  "Study, study, and then study some more to learn about how a free economic system has to be established and maintained. And for that to happen I'll need to set up a staff of bright people with a pair of oldsters who know more about agriculture than anyone in any universe does."

  Susan chuckled. "I think my parents would've dropped dead on the spot had they heard you refer to their delicate highbrow daughter as a great farmer."

  "Things have changed somewhat since then, Your Highness. Seriously, you and Dave will be instrumental in the planning and creating the agrarian part of our society."

  "Yes, I realize that and will be glad to be involved."

  "Thank you, Sue."

  It was nearly dark by the time they returned to the farm, accompanied by one more small wheeled vehicle carrying Susan and David who did not particularly care to travel two feet off the ground. They left Benjamin, who let everyone know that his surname was Mathews but now everyone called him General, in charge of the cleanup crew. At David's suggestion, the farm workers returned to their small community near his house since they were needed to continue taking care of the food production and its deliveries.

  They all ate in the cafeteria after washing off the grime and sweat from their work in the city, and watched with delight as the new parents paraded around the hall with their adopted children with great pride. Angie and George came by their table to let them see little Elizabeth, who paid them little attention as she sucked on Angie's breast noisily.

  "She's adorable, Angie," Marty said. "But even more impressive is the fact that you had changed tremendously from the moment you'd touched her."

  "You mean that I no longer look like a silly adolescent? I appreciate that you said it, Marty."

  "And she's right, too." Jenny added. "Because you seem to've matured in the past few hours, and there's a motherly glow in your eyes suddenly. You, too, George. Now, kids, run along to show her off to all your friends."

  Angela kissed her mother emotionally before they left, prancing away with George holding her hand as she carried the baby.

  "Amazing change. She'd never kissed me like that before in her entire life." There were tears in Jenny's eyes as she spoke.

  Marty smiled. "And what's even more amazing is that all the couples seem to look and behave just like them. I guess that's what having kids means to them, even the mature couples who had gone through this before with their own kids."

  "I still can't get over how cute these kids are," Nick added. "Like miniatures of all of us."

  "As they should be."

  Nick was startled and nearly jumped when suddenly a huge lightening bold lit the hall's windows, followed by the trembling sound of thunder. When she saw his reaction, Marty burst into laughter. "Still terrified by a little lightening jolt, big boy?"

  "Petrified is more like it, and I hate it. Does it happen here often, guys?"

  "It's the summer storm season, and you were lucky we didn't get any so far. Not only that but it can be accompanied by strong winds and a pouring kind of rain that's driven out of the Black Sea through the Bosphorus strait."

  "As much as I hate such storms we're quite lucky to have gotten this one, which will do a through cleanup of Heraklion during the night. Were all the bodies already dumped into the quarry, Dave?"

  "With so many helpers they sure were. And I imagine they were total consumed by the fire before the rain hit them so it'll be a lot pleasanter when we get back there in the morning."

  "I'm glad."

  Chapter 18

  They rushed through the pouring rain over to the office, and Marty and Nick pulsated their skins as they saw the others do to shake the water off their pelts, then stood for a moment under the dry heat fixture that Paula turned on, and felt totally dry in a minute.

  Marty touched Nick's skin and was amazed how dry it was. "Son of a bitch, all the comforts of home given us by the fucking dead bastards." She mumbled as they entered the boardroom.

  "No kidding."

  "I guess Marty succeeded in ridding us of all the bastards today," Jenny said with a wide grin when they were assembled around the table, as though they did not know it.

  "I didn't do it alone, you know, having had such great help from everyone and such a terrific cleanup by Dave and his people."

  "Just accept the compliment graciously, General, because we all owe you a great debt."

  "Sorry, Sue, I never knew how to do that. Comes from being so totally intent on doing my job. And this one, I think, was the most important I'd ever done."

  "You certainly did." Jenny said very seriously. "Okay, we need to talk about the aftermath of getting our freedom. What's your assessment of the houses we can occupy in Heraklion, how many are there and what's their condition, Dave?"

  "I took a tour of the city and found that they'd built close to twenty-thousand beautifully appointed single family units, of which two-thousand were occupied and will be in move-in condition once we clean them up. They'd also built five-thousand singles' apartments very similar to those we have here, none of which were ever used and are also ready to move into. Which means that we got three times the living space that we'll need for a while, so we'll have to arrange for crews to maintain all unoccupied places."

  "Which we'll have to hire and pay them a sal
ary once they start working." Nick said.

  "Any idea how we'll pay and how much, Nikki?"

  "Not yet, but that's unimportant at the moment because we'll have to continue with our current system of taking free care of everyone's needs for a while longer."

  "I understand the general reasons for it, but I'm sure everyone would like to hear specifics."

  "Of course. My first project is the monetary system, which was why I'd gone to Heraklion to inspect the Gogian bank physically. I didn't go there blindly because Paula and I had studied their monetary system and banking procedures yesterday morning. We found that they used only coins as the legal tender--gold, silver, bronze, and copper, which was decimally based. In other words, one gold Drachma is worth twenty silvers, the bronze is worth a quarter of the silver, and the copper is a nickel. I'm using these names because they're familiar to me from the old days but I won't mind it if you want to change them."

  Jenny looked around the table for a moment. "I guess we have no problem with the names that you gave the coins. What else did you do?"

  "We looked into their commerce records to determine what things used to cost basing our estimates mostly on staples, and found that they charged their customers a quarter for a loaf of bread of the kind and size that we have here, a nickel for a chicken egg and four nickels for an ostrich. And so on very much like the value of such things probably all over the world. With the exception of luxury items such as horse balls, for which they charged a Drachma each, the bastards. Everything that was sold here in both large and small markets came from central warehouses that were owned by the crown and had to be paid for in cash at time of delivery."

  "Which means that King Fillipi made tons of money on everything we'd produced because it didn't cost him a nickel." David said indignantly.

  "That's right, which was why he lived in such opulence. Besides, it was he who minted coins, the metals for which he used to buy cheaply before the war."

  "So everything started and ended in his pocket?"

  "That's right. But he did have big expenditures on establishing and maintaining his army, particularly the air and ground attack vehicles and planes that they brought with them from the mainland after the war."

  "How did they transport them, and everyone else over here?"

  "By using large hovercraft, or skimmers as they're also called. An important part of running an economy other than pricing goods and services, is the cost of real estate, such as land, housing, and farms. Which we'd also looked into and found that a hectare, which is the local measurement for two and a half acres, was sold all over Greece for five-hundred Drachmas."

  "For all land?" David asked with interest.

  "No. It was just a base price which went up or down depending on desirability of its location and use. Farmland, for instance, was the cheapest at just fifty Drachmas per hectare."

  "Because they used us and probably many others like us all over Greece to work the land?"

  "Exactly, which made it the cheapest of all land parcels, a factor that's going to be very important to you, Dave."

  "And to our future farming community, that's for sure."

  "Now, urban land was sold from five-hundred drachmas for an eighth of a hectare on the slopes and waterfront that the rich favored and could afford, down to twenty drachmas for the flatlands. Houses, again based on wealth, were sold from anywhere of twenty for an apartment upward to a thousand."

  "A similar system to what we had in England." Jenny stated. "But how are we going to justly divide these dwellings amongst our people?"

  "By a lottery that will make it fair for everyone, and afterwards people will use their future earnings to upgrade or downgrade their dwellings."

  "And their earnings will be derived from whatever they choose to work at?"

  "Correct, which brings me back to our banking system and people's accounts in it. Paula's clerks had averaged all existing bank accounts, except for the king's, and came up with a value of one-thousand drachmas. Which, to my mind, will be a fair reward for every one of us for our slave labors and an equitable starting point in our new life. So I'd like us to vote on it and agree to disperse it to our citizenry as soon as we can."

  "Sounds fair to me, Nikki, so let's vote on it."

  Once the vote passed quickly, Nick continued. "Now, I know how much you all hate the identification numbers the Gogians had embedded on our palms, but I see no reason to discard it right now since it'll help us set up the monetary system with great ease."

  "Because we already have active accounts attached to these numbers, which we'll switch from points to money?" Arvin asked.

  "That's right. Not only that, since the Gogians had used this system as well, every establishment that they ran has active scanners to read these ID numbers which are directly connected to their individual bank account. So, if any of us goes to buy food or any other product, all he or she will have to do is put their palm on the scanner and the purchase amount is automatically charged. Conversely, the same system can be used to transfer employment wages into the person's personal account. So if you all agree to keep using the system to run our economy, we need to vote on it."

  "How about the our fucking meters, will they continue working?" Arvin asked with a chuckle.

  "No, since we'd already disabled them, and the same for the milking setups."

  "My God," Jenny let out a sigh of relief. "All gone after so many years of total and absolute slavery. Okay, let's vote on the ID's."

  They voted and approved but with visible reluctance, after which Nick continued. "Now, I'm sure Dave's just itching to ask about the future of the farm and the people living on it. Right?"

  "You bet I am. My first question is about what's going to happen to it."

  "That's easy. We'll privatize it by sectioning all the land, other than the common areas, into small parcels and then run a lottery for those interested in owning and working a small farm. But to do that we need you to tell us how large or small each parcel should be in order to be able to support a family of four comfortably."

  "I see where you're going. From my experience I'd say that a decent size for such a farm will be four hectares, which can be easily managed by two people. But considering that we have a hundred and twenty dedicated farmers, forty of whom I'm sure will get married, it brings us down to eighty farms in all. So if my calculation is correct that'll reduce our total available land from twenty-thousand hectares to about nineteen."

  "Which should become communal land dedicated to grain fields, orchards, vineyards, and raising food animals. And, of course, all processing plants."

  "Correct. But who'll work them?"

  "According to my information lots of farming communities throughout the ages had always operated as collectives--each farmer owns his own land where he grows quick cash crops and animals that he likes to cultivate. And the public land is worked on a shared responsibility by all farmers, who divide the profits equally on a periodic basis. Which will require the village to have a manager to set up work areas and schedules for the farmers, negotiate prices with buyers, and keep the books. For which, I'm quite sure, you're perfectly suited, Dave."

  "Your idea, Nikki, is great because everyone will like this kind of system and we'll all have plenty of remaining farmland to more than double our community by recruiting new young men and women who'll be interested in farming. But the idea of setting me up as manager is bad because you got a much better candidate for it sitting right across from you."

  "That's a crazy idea, Dave," Sue burst out. "I don't want to be responsible for all of these people's livelihood."

  "Really? So tell me who's been doing exactly that and free for the goddamn freaks while I worked the land, which I love doing. No, Sue, you're the best and most suited for the position because all our people love and respect you."

  Susan looked at him for a moment, then at everyone else before responding. "Well, I guess I am at that, and no false modesty on my part."

  "So vote
d?" Jenny asked and waited for comments. When none came she hit the gavel. "So voted."

  "Okay people, I guess I'm hooked. I have a few questions for Nikki, though. How are we going to work the land, particularly plowing it, without horses?"

  "What's happened with the horses so far, Sue?"

  "When we let them know about being free to leave the farm, I'm sure many will be gone within an hour. But I doubt the geldings will want to leave, or many of the milking mares. I'd hate to chase them out, probably to certain death in the wilds, after years of service even if it wasn't willingly. So, if they elect to remain can we still use them despite Marty's opinion that they'll all have to leave and learn to fend for themselves?"

  "I meant only those who are capable of it rather than the geldings and mares who'll have no future out there and would rather stay and work on the farm to earn their keep. However, I suggest that you and Dave go back to Heraklion and choose a few of the many small tracked vehicles to use in the fields as plow-pullers, which is how farmers in my day took care of big size fields."

  David suddenly struck his forehead loudly and cursed. "God, it didn't even occur to me to use them for the purpose. Heck, we can attach a few plows to a metal bar and plow at least four rows at a time and cut our workload and time by seventy-five percent without using brute force. Thanks for the suggestion, Marty."

  Susan added. "And from me, too. When will we have available the maps with the parcels set up and marked on them, Nikki?"

  Pamela answered when he looked at her. "It'll take me a few days to set it up since my staff's already overloaded with work, but I'll get it to you just as soon as I can."

  "May I suggest, Pam," Marty said. "That you recruit more clerks from among our young people who, I'm sure, would love to get off the shit detail since we got plenty of new kids to replace them."

  "Terrific idea, Marty. I will as soon as we get out of here."